東南アジア社会の原像 : その文化人類学的考察(<記念号>本岡武教授退官記念号)

Abstract

The prototype of mainland South-East Asian Society seems to have formed in its most northern part where hill and valley people coexisted and conflicted for many centuries. The author assumes that the inhabitants there would have organized "tightly" structured social systems based on patrilineage, because of the unfavourable natural environment and unstable social-political circumstances. One finds much more "loosely" structured social systems based on bilateral kinships among their plains cousins in the southern and coastal parts of the areas because of the favourable natural and socio-political habitats. There, the inhabitants are very unlikely to form corporate groups which go beyond the family- and village-levels. Accordingly, Sinicization and Indianization would have been necessary for the people to form supra-local solidarities through urbanization and state-building, and I propose a hypothesis in this connection.